After having recently spent most a blog post cracking jokes at the (considerable) expense of vulgar nouveau riche football clubs, I thought I should even things out a bit by admitting something: tradition, as nice as it is to have, is no better at buying success than good, hard cash. A team that has been demonstrating this over and over again in the last couple of weeks is the Hamburger Sportverein, or HSV. This Hamburg team, with their long and great history, lost by a very poor 0:3 to VfB Stuttgart on the weekend; the week before, they only just limped to a disappointing 0:0 draw against Hannover Sportverein 1896, despite the fact that they were playing at home and that Hannover are supposed to be the smaller and less important HSV from the North German plain.
It’s not like Hamburg are running short on tradition. No, the harbour city boys have never been relegated from the top league since its inception in 1963; neither have they been lacking in titles, winning the league six times since then – in 1983, they even won the European Cup against Juventus Turin. In 1987, they won their third DFB cup, and then… and then nothing.
Now, before we go any further, let me just respond to a few points. Firstly, of course things could be worse – just look at Borussia Mönchengladbach and 1. FC Köln, or Eintracht Frankfurt or 1. FC Kaiserslautern, all of whom have tasted the bitter draught that is relegation and had to fight their way back up to Bundesliga play. Then again, this fight and the victories gained in it at least energised the young fans in a way that HSV supporters born after 1980 have never experienced. Add to this the fact that Frankfurt and Kaiserslautern very nearly went bankrupt just a few years back, and you’ll see that being a HSV fan is very much like living in a comfortable, well-off, but quite boring bubble. Even with their expensive squad, full of big-name international players and what some might like to call stars, HSV have trouble shaking off the lethargy and call it a good season if they make it to fifth place.
Meanwhile, Cologne’s team only really has one star: Lukas “Prince Poldi” Podolski, who has already been relegated with his team once (seven years back) and who, with the 1:4 caning administered by Wolfsburg on the weekend, looks like he’ll be going through another. Just before the disastrous game, the popular coach Frank Schaefer said he would step down at the end of the season of his own free will; team insiders, however, cite director Volker Finke as the source of at least some of this “free will”, in no small part due to his habit of getting involved in coaching business. I wonder if he’s learned anything from recent examples of what happens when teams know that their coach will be leaving at the end of the season: just look at FC Bayern München and Louis van Gaal – or Hamburger SV, of course, where Armin Veh “surprisingly” announced his departure (before they could fire him…).
Results match day 31:
SC Freiburg – Hannover 96 1:3
FC Schalke 04 – 1. FC Kaiserslautern 0:1
Bayer Leverkusen – 1899 Hoffenheim 2:1
VfB Stuttgart – Hamburger SV 3:0
Eintracht Frankfurt – Bayern München 1:1
FC St. Pauli – Werder Bremen 1:3
Borussia Mönchengladbach – Borussia Dortmund 1:0
VfL Wolfsburg – 1. FC Köln 4:1
1. FC Nürnberg – 1. FSV Mainz 05 0:0
Table:
1 Borussia Dortmund 69 P
2 Bayer Leverkusen 64 P
3 Hannover 96 57 P
4 Bayern München 56 P
5 1. FSV Mainz 05 49 P
6 1. FC Nürnberg 47 P
7 Hamburger SV 43 P
8 SC Freiburg 41 P
9 1899 Hoffenheim 40 P
10 FC Schalke 04 40 P
11 Werder Bremen 38 P
12 1. FC Kaiserslautern 37 P
13 VfB Stuttgart 36 P
14 1. FC Köln 35 P
15 Eintracht Frankfurt 34 P
16 VfL Wolfsburg 32 P
17 Borussia Mönchengladbach 29 P
18 FC St. Pauli 29 P
